Turkey orders arrests of energy & education staff

Turkey's government has ordered 85 more officials arrested, domestic media report. The latest wave of arrests affects the Energy and Education ministries, according to CNN Turk.

The arrests come a day after a court ordered the online editor of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet jailed pending trial on a charge of "spreading propaganda for a terrorist organization," in the words of Turkey's official Anadolu press agency.

Oguz Guven joins a dozen Cumhuriyet journalists already in jail and facing sentences of up to 43 years in prison.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan - who will meet his US counterpart, Donald Trump, in Washington later on Tuesday - has sought the extradition of the Pennsylvania-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of masterminding last July's failed coup attempt. In the past 10 months, Erdogan has ordered the arrests of several academics, members of the press and the staff of multiple government agencies.

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Many Turks initially supported Erdogan's mass detentions after last July's failed putsch, in which rogue troops allegedly commandeered warplanes to bomb the parliament and used tanks to kill 240 people. But criticism has mounted as the arrests have widened, with relatives of many of the now more than 150,000 people detained or sacked from government positions denying their loved ones' involvement in the coup and calling them victims of a purge.

mkg/rc (Reuters, AFP)

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